Study participants
Data were obtained from the 2016–2018 Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES), which was conducted by the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The KNHANES is a self-report survey conducted in Koreans of all age and is designed to gather annual national data on sociodemographic, economic, and health-related conditions and behaviors. The survey is consisted of three components (health interview, health examination and nutrition survey), all of which are conducted by trained staff members including physicians and medical technicians [21].
The health interview and health examination are performed by trained medical staff and interviewers at the mobile examination center. One week after the health interview and health examination surveys, dieticians visit the homes of participants for the nutrition survey. The food frequency questionnaire is composed of 63 food items that are key sources of energy and nutrients. The food intake questionnaire has been designed as an open-ended survey for reporting various dishes and foods using the 24-h recall method with various measuring aids.
Of the 24,269 survey participants, the study excluded who tested positive for serologic markers for liver disease (hepatitis B, hepatitis C, or liver cirrhosis) (n=735), were aged <20 years who did not undergo blood testing conducted by the KNHANES (n=6,868), and were not representative of covariates considered in the study (failed to answer the survey questionnaires) (n=3,148). Accordingly, the final sample size consisted of 13,518 participants (Fig. 1). This study was an analysis of existing data; thus it did not require approval by ethics review board. The data that was used in this study is the KNHANES and it has been getting an annual review and approval by Korea Centers for Disease Control (KCDC) Research Ethics Review Committee since 2007.
This study investigated the effect of prolonged sitting particularly on NAFLD. The participants with FLD related to alcohol were eliminated during the process of comprising the study sample. FLD related to alcohol was determined by biochemical and clinical profiles of the participants that were examined by the KNHANES’s trained staff members (i.e. physicians and medical technicians) [21].
NAFLD classification
NAFLD is the main dependent variable in this study. NAFLD in this study was diagnosed according to the hepatic steatosis index (HSI), which was developed by the Department of Internal Medicine and Liver Research Institute in Seoul National University College of Medicine to efficiently select individuals for liver ultrasonography 22. The HSI formula was derived via logistic regression model using serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT) to serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST) ratio, body mass index (BMI), and diabetes mellitus status: HSI= 8 × (ALT/AST ratio) + BMI (+ 2, if female; + 2, if with diabetes mellitus) [22]. Participants were considered to have NAFLD if their HSI value was above 36.
Sitting time
The main independent variable is the participants’ sitting time. Sitting time was measured by asking participants to report the following question adopted from the long-version of the International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ) [23, 24]. The overall daily sitting time was estimated particularly following questions: How many hours do you typically spend sitting or lying down while engaged in activities such as working at a desk or computer, visiting friends, driving, reading, writing, watching television, playing games, using the Internet, or listening to music on a usual day? Participants’ responses to sitting time were divided into 4 categories using age-adjusted quartile (Table 1b).
Covariates
Sociodemographic, economic, and health-related factors were also considered in the study. Sociodemographic factors included age, educational attainment, and marital status. Economic factors included household income and occupation. Health-related factors include sleeping time (hours), total energy intake ((carbohydrate(g) x 4 kcal/g) + (protein(g) x 4 kcal/g) + (fat(g) x 9 kcal/g)), daily physical activity level based on the KNHANES questionnaire which was adopted from the World Health Organization guideline (active: ≥150 min of moderate activity, ≥ 75 min of vigorous activity, or a mixture of both for ≥ 150 min; inactive: <150 min of moderate activity, <75 min of vigorous activity, or a mixture of both for <150 min) [25], pack years of smoking, current drinking status, comorbidity of hypertension, and comorbidity of diabetes mellitus.
Statistical analysis
The frequencies and percentages of participants were calculated for each of the categorized variables included in the study. The variables included in the analysis were all categorical, those that were not initially categorical were converted into categories (age, BMI, total energy intake). The chi-square (χ2) test was performed to assess the chi-square differences between the groups within each categorized variable (Table 1a). Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to calculate the odds ratios (with 95% confidence intervals) for NAFLD according to the participants’ report on sitting time (Table 2). The sub-group analysis for NAFLD stratified by the participants’ sex, physical activeness, and obesity status defined by BMI was also performed using multiple logistic regression (Fig. 2).
The reported odds ratios were adjusted for all covariates considered in the study. The sampling weight variables were applied in the analysis to improve the representativeness of the sample. KNHANES has constructed sample weights to take into account survey non-response, over-sampling, post-stratification, and sampling error. The use of sample weights in the analysis is recommended to produce an unbiased national estimate. For all data analysis, SAS version 9.4 (SAS Institute, Inc, Cary, NC, USA) was used and the significance level was set at P-value < 0.05.